The New York Attorney General has issued subpoenas in a probe of allegations that ousted Fashion Cafe founder Tomasso Buti and his supermodel wife Daniela Pestova looted the company.

Investigators are looking at possible securities laws violations and fraud charges over the alleged skimming of as much as $40 million from the once high-flying chain.

The chain’s angry investors booted Buti, 32, from the company late last year and have sued him in state civil courts, claiming he embezzled millions and stashed it in Swiss bank accounts.

Also dragged into the probe is Buti’s brother and business partner, Francesco, 30.

The Fashion Cafe, which isn’t involved in the probe, said it would cooperate fully with investigators but had no other comment.

The Fashion Cafe’s investors have reorganized the remaining four restaurants of the chain’s original seven, and brought in famed restaurateur Giuseppe Cipriani to help with its turnaround.

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s office declined to comment.

Knowledgeable sources said that swimsuit model Pestova, who’s in the process of divorcing Buti, “was duped by (the Buti brothers) and knows nothing” about the alleged scams that nearly brought down the theme restaurant chain.

The Buti brothers have been mired in as many as 42 separate lawsuits and judgments, ranging from non-payment of taxes and rent to stiffing suppliers, including a law firm for $413,000.

The Butis’ current lawyer, Judd Burstein, said he wasn’t aware of the attorney general’s probe.

The Fashion Cafe burst onto the scene four years ago with four supermodels acting as “partners.” Buti parlayed his brief marriage to Pestova to lure in Elle Macpherson, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington and Claudia Schiffer.

But when they were dragged into Buti’s legal quagmire and got sued themselves, they bailed out.

One civil suit filed by Florida investor Dr. Luigi Palma said Buti “has siphoned substantial assets and income properly belonging to the partnership to finance his lavish lifestyle that includes an expense apartment, a car collection, private jets and extravagant entertainment.”

Another lawsuit from an Irish investment group also said Buti transferred cash register receipts as loans and payments to companies he controls to “support the Butis’ lavish spending and lifestyle.”

Buti lives in a rented $25,000-a-month apartment in Olympic Towers, and rents a luxury beach house in Southampton, owns a $2 million house in Miami and spent $1 million on expensive cars, including a Ferrari, three Mercedes Benzes and two Porsches.

The lawsuits claim that Buti encouraged some of the investors to get in on the ground floor because Wall Street firms including Bear Stearns, Smith Barney and Goldman Sachs were going to do an IPO of Fashion Cafe and it would be worth close to $120 million. The company never went public.

Buti told other investors that a separate company was going to acquire Fashion Cafe and take it public. Regulators frown on touting of an IPO to raise investment money, noting that in some cases it can be illegal.

Investors also said that Buti vastly inflated the potential profits of the chain, claiming they would make $14 million to $30 million in profit in a year.